In a world where a blog is created every second does the world really need another blog? Well, it's got one.
An irregular set of postings, weaving an intricate pattern around a diverse set of subjects. Comment on culture, technology, politics and the occasional rant about life.
Alan ... in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Protest at Advent (via Mockingbird's Leap)

Mockingbird’s Leap is a group blog that operates over Advent. In previous years I’ve found the variety and depth of posts quite thought-provoking in the run up to Christmas.

It describes itself as “a short-term but intentional community of friends and connections from many places who have agreed to practice attention in the run up to Christmas Day, so that we can learn to appreciate the many ways we have been gifted. We live with the awareness that often the busyness and commerciality of the season leads to inattention, so that we are constantly in danger of not noticing.”

Advent – the season of hope but I’m also thinking about it in terms of ‘protest’. Was the incarnation in some sense Yahweh’s statement of protest at the way things were and are? A statement of protest against the politics and government of the time which protected those in power and ensured that those down the food chain remained exactly there? I am constantly surprised at our level of resignation in accepting the analysis of the economic crisis along with the so-called solutions given.

I am not surprised at how little we ‘the church’ have to say on the matter because for many of us, especially myself, we remain relatively safe as long as we have a decent job and low interest rates. But what about the other guy, the person who’s job and house and future have been torn from them? Will we simply be paralysed by the gravity of the situation or can we be a protest of light – of hope – of righteous anger at the financial institutions whose greed placed us here and governments who failed on our behalf to regulate proper governance?